East Palo Alto activist groups are planning a “March on Palo Alto” this weekend to protest what they say is a long-standing practice of racial profiling by the neighboring city’s police department.

Organizers said they expect more than 500 people to join the peaceful march, which will start at East Palo Alto City Hall at 2 p.m. tomorrow and end on the steps of Palo Alto City Hall.

The event is a reaction to Palo Alto police Chief Lynne Johnson’s recent comments, which many interpreted as an endorsement of racial profiling as a strategy for solving a spate of violent robberies — several involving black suspects — in the generally peaceful city.

Johnson told reporters she had instructed her officers to stop African-Americans on the street to “find out who they are.”

Johnson later apologized, insisting she misspoke. She said the department’s officers knew to stop only people who were acting suspiciously and matched suspect descriptions, not simply people of a certain race.

But many black leaders in Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, which has a larger black population, said the damage had already been done. Several called for Johnson’s ouster at a Palo Alto City Council meeting Monday.

The problem for many blacks is that Johnson’s statements rang all too true, said Faye McNair-Knox, executive director of One East Palo Alto, one of the groups behind the march.

“This is the first time the policy has been stated out loud,” she said. “But it’s symptomatic of years and years of problems with the treatment of people of color by the Palo Alto Police Department. The bigger issue to be addressed is not so much her statement, but there is a real systemic change that needs to happen in how the Palo Alto police do business.”

The idea for the march was sparked at a Tuesday meeting of Coalition for Change, an arm of the East Palo Alto African-American Leadership Summit, McNair-Knox said.

“Everyone had a story about experiencing the Palo Alto Police Department’s racial profiling in one form or another,” she said.

The march is planned along the lines of an anti-violence demonstration last year in East Palo Alto called the “Live in Peace March and Rally,” which the same organizers helped coordinate. That event drew more than 1,000 people.

The marchers will be accompanied by East Palo Alto police to the city limits, where they’ll be met by Palo Alto police, who will control traffic and escort them to City Hall.

“We’re going to do everything we can to give them the chance to exercise their First Amendment rights,” said Palo Alto police Agent Dan Ryan. “We just want to make it safe and expeditious for them.”

Ryan said that in his 25 years with the department, “I don’t think there has ever been a standard practice, that I’m aware of, where we target blacks specifically based on skin color and nothing else.”

But Ryan said he can “understand how the residents of East Palo Alto might have that feeling after particular incidents.”

“I think a big part of it is how we communicate during a car stop or an investigative stop,” Ryan continued. “We can certainly do a better job of that.”

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